Ever been the victim of spam? Better yet, has your company been the victim of email blacklisting for no good reason? The advent of email marketing has opened up myriad opportunities to reach consumers in a whole new way. With that, though, comes unsolicited and offensive emails, bothering customers and causing backlash. A large problem in email marketing lies squarely in educating marketers and companies on how to bring professionalism and reputability back to email marketing.

Enter Habeas Chief Executive Officer Des Cahill. He gives the Mountain View, Calif.–based provider of online reputation management services his extensive executive-level experience in marketing, sales, and operations at technology heavyweight companies such as Apple, America Online, and Netscape, as well as in-the-trenches start-up experience with Autonomy, BridgeSpan, and eFax.com.

Under his leadership, Habeas has established itself as not only a solution provider, but a thought leader in email marketing. Through partnerships and Habeas Advisory Services—a professional services offering designed to assist organizations in the management of all aspects of online reputation—Cahill has helped spearhead the drive for best practices to optimize email performance, something that impacts every corner of the CRM universe.

In the realm of email education, the company’s launch of ReputationWiki.org in December includes reference materials and articles about reputation and deliverability concepts, authentication and accreditation topics, and a glossary of relevant terms—a one-stop shop for email marketing knowledge.

Helping to foster this community, Habeas is partnering with industry associations such as the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance and companies including BoxSentry, Campaigner, Concep, Innovyx, LashBack, Sendmail, Summit Projects, and Thin Data.

While the end result remains to be seen, Cahill’s efforts to help restore validity and security to the email marketing space have safely delivered him a spot among this year’s Influential Leaders.